Abstract: Population pressure is an important factor in the development of mountainous areas. In order to assess the population pressure of mountainous areas, a new population pressure assessment model was proposed in this paper. It consisted of three components, i.e., urban population pressure index, agricultural population pressure index and natural population growth rate. Taking Liangshan Yizu Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province of China as the study area, the urban population pressure index, agricultural population pressure index and population pressure index were computed by the model. We had three main conclusions. 1) The mean value of population pressure index of the study area is 4.95, which is at a“normal”level of population pressure. The“small” level,“smaller”level,“normal”level,“large”level and“very large”level respectively account for 23.53%, 11.76%, 29.41%, 29.41% and 5.88% of the total study area, respectively. 2) Topography is an important factor of population pressure of the study area, with the population pressure being higher in the eastern and northeastern parts, and the population pressure lower in the valley of Anning River, the south of the study area and the Yanyuan basin. 3) The population pressure index is related with the incidence of poverty and the ecological frangibility, so the result also proves that the high population pressure and ecological frangibility are important factors leading to the poverty in the mountainous areas.

Key words: Liangshan, mountainous areas, population capacity, population pressure